What is driving the rise of happiness in human discourse?

Is climate change the defining theme of our generation? It is an existential challenge, no doubt about it and as fellow humans we’re glad there are so many brilliant entrepreneurs and dedicated VCs backing them (climate.vc, Clean Growth Fund, Future Planet Capital etc.) and there is now government action like the Inflation Reduction Act buoying this sector.

At SHUFL we’re backing another super-trend and that’s the rise in demand for happiness and the innovations helping us Sleep better, live Healthier, get Fitter and enjoy our Leisure time more. Google’s NGram (a precursor to the ChatGPT and other LLM AIs) gives an interesting insight to trends in human discourse. Climate Change saw a bump in the late 80s/early 90s and another in the late noughties but since 2010 the prevalence of ‘Happiness’ has grown 2.4x faster than ‘Climate Change’.

We think the pandemic has only accelerated prioritisation of happiness further but trend is more long term and deep rooted than that. We’d love to hear your perspective on what you think is driving this?